Tag: poverty

I am a woman. A strong, powerful woman with a heart full of honey and a mind as strong as a steel trap. Who wants to change the world by using her fingertips on the keyboard to mold the clay of the world into a beautiful piece of pottery. That even though the clay hurts when thrown on the wheel, it is twisted and turned into a work of art. The sad part is, that art can be misinterpreted, and so many people in this world like to take the way I look at things and twist them into the way some people look at nude drawings. Offensive. But all I want is for others to see that there is a mass full of people out there who only want to go another day without having to worry if their wings are going to be clipped, so they can no longer feel the wind on their face and the breeze in their soul. Or feel the sunshine on their back. The way sunrises and sunsets are always too short. Always a beautiful flicker that reminds us of rebirth, and of endings in whispers. So many lives are like that—powerful rays licking the earth hoping to taste the saltiness of the rocks and the mustiness of the dirt. Longing to feel anything besides the nagging sense of debt to the American dream they feel every morning when they fill their briefcase with another stack of propaganda, stomping off to work in pumps that cost more to place on their delicately manicured feet than it would relatively cost to feed an entire village or two of dying children here in own country.

And while my heart may be full of honey, I cannot make the world a sweeter place if no one is willing to get stung a little. I may watch a sea full of people, whose hearts beat to the drum of abuse and suffering in sizes my hands cannot hold, but this does not mean that my shattering in pieces that could put the sand on the ocean to shame makes me weak. I am only stronger because of it. Stronger because I vicariously have felt the pounding of a thousand nails along my heartstrings. And while I will never be like Jesus was, I can only hope that by filing my tongue every morning with an outpouring of holy words will make me understand how it feels to be uplifted.

Too many people are satisfied being the bulldozer in the city, when the graffiti is always much, much prettier. We would much rather stigmatize tagging as vandalism, instead see the beauty in the pain sprawled across walls like blood oozing from paint cans. Fall short of understanding the art that comes from the street. Girls splayed around street lights hoping their butterfly wings aren’t too crushed beneath their corsets and red lipstick. Men who know no other way to provide for their family than to peddle a little metal, just between their hips so that the world knows they mean business when they are thrown up against a wall, with nowhere to go but through the bullets. But let me tell you, it’s so much easier to do the judging when you aren’t the one whose life is crumbling around you. So go ahead, keep the blinders on. But you are missing out on a world full of beauty. And while I see an ocean of problems we need to fix, and people who need more than a fistful of stitches, I will always try to bring roses to every sunrise, and lilies to every sunset.

I may be a woman. But that does not make me an object. Unless you count my soul as a work of art. I will only allow you objectify me if I ask